CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The Cleveland Indians, going into Thursday's games, have the eighth-best record (26-18) among Major League Baseball's 30 teams.

Despite losses in their last two games, the Indians are a big league-best 18-6 beginning with a 10-3 win at Kansas City in the second game of an April 28 day-night doubleheader.

But ..... the Indians' average home attendance of 16,166 in 24 dates is the worst in baseball. Florida's teams rank 28th and 29th, respectively: the Tampa Bay Rays (17,936) and the Miami Marlins (17,730).

The Indians' recent surge has done little to put fans in the seats. During the 18-6 stretch, the Indians have had 16 home dates and drawn 266,432 fans for an average crowd of 16,652.

The two best crowds among those 16 home dates: 34,282 last Friday, when the Indians' 6-3, 10-inning win over the Seattle Mariners was followed by fireworks; the single-admission May 13 doubleheader the Tribe split with the New York Yankees before 23,300 fans.

The Indians had begun the season with a six-game road trip, going 3-3 at Toronto and Tampa Bay.

The Tribe then opened the home season with an eight-game stand. The home opener, an 11-6 loss to the Yankees, packed 41,567 fans into Progressive Field. The next seven dates attracted an average crowd of 11,427.

Cleveland home attendance has trended downward for 12 years.

From June 12, 1995 through April 4, 2001 -- the second home game of that season -- the Indians set what was then a major league record of 455 straight home sellouts. The Tribe, of course, boasted an exciting offense and was a perennial contender, winning American League pennants in 1995 and 1997.

The Indians last led the major leagues in home attendance in 2000, drawing 42,670 fans per game.

Despite the sellout streak's end, the 2001 Indians' average home crowd was 39,694, ranking fourth in baseball.

The numbers began to plunge in 2002, with an average Jacobs Field attendance of 32,307, ranking 12th.

In 2003, as season ticket sales continued to drop, the Indians' home attendance of 21,358 was 24th, ahead of just six teams.

That began a 10-year stretch through last season when, in order from 2003, Cleveland's average home attendance ranked 24th, 25th, 24th, 25th, 21st, 22nd, 25th, 30th (last), 24th, 29th.

The spike to 21st in 2007, when the Indians drew 28,448 fans per regular season home game, occurred as the Tribe won the American League Central Division title with a 96-66 record. Cleveland then defeated the Yankees, 3-1, in an AL Division Series and led the Boston Red Sox, 3-1, before dropping the last three games to lose the AL Championship Series. The five playoff games at Progressive Field all sold out.

Longtime fans remember that the Indians had serious attendance problems for more than 35 years until 1993, when the team drew an average home crowd of 26,888 in its last season at Cleveland Municipal Stadium.

A tracking of the Indians' home attendance by season on Baseball-Reference.com shows that beginning in the mid-1950s -- after a decade when the Indians were one of baseball's premier teams -- and into the 1990s, Cleveland's home attendance was almost annually among the lowest in the American League (and thus in all of baseball).

In fact, from the late 1950s until 1990, rumors persisted that the Indians would move out of Cleveland because of various ownerships' financial losses due to poor attendance figures at Municipal Stadium.

Finally, Major League Baseball had enough. It was generally assumed, with a rather transparent threat by MLB leadership, that if Cleveland didn't build a new ballpark for the Indians, the franchise would be moved out of town.

On May 8, 1990, Cuyahoga County voters passed Issue 2 by 51 to 49 percent, approving various taxes to build the Gateway Sports and Entertainment Complex. Thus was built Jacobs Field (now Progressive Field) for the Indians and Gund Arena (now Quicken Loans Arena) for the Cavaliers, who moved north from the Richfield Coliseum.

If the issue had failed, the Indians almost certainly would have left Cleveland.

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